Our Gwen is inspiring women to be heard

Gwen Rhys named in the top 30 most inspirational women in London.'121017M-A416

Published:14:29Friday 19 October 2012

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A Brackley women is continuing to fight the gender war after being named as one of the top 30 most inspirational business women in London.

Gwen Rhys is a member of Brackley Town Council, runs the space gallery in Market Place with partner and fellow councillor Peter Rawlinson, and is CEO of Women in the City which promotes and rewards female achievement.

Last week Miss Rhys was listed alongside other renowned business women, including Baroness Hogg (former journalist, politician, and first women to chair a FTSE 100 firm), by the luxury lifestyle publication Brummell magazine, a supplement of the Financial News.

Miss Rhys received the accolade as Women in the City prepares to hold its 10th anniversary lunch.

She said despite several decades of improving prospects for women in business the war of the sexes was still raging and that currently women hold less than 12 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships. She added: “I’m not sure whether there’s every going to be an answer to that but I’m currently working with a woman called Dr Anne Moir who wrote ‘Why Men Don’t Iron.’ She’s an expert in differences between male and female brains, and I’m working with her to put out a handbook which will give some practical tips to women - and men - to say you think differently, so you have to talk differently and behave differently.

“The business world in the city is incredibly masculine in the way it’s organised and the language it uses, and many women feel they can’t behave like women. But actually there are a lot men who don’t want to act in that old fashioned way. So that whole culture needs to change.”

“Some disagree but I’m actually pro-quotas. Legislation derives change. It was legislation that gave women equal pay and equal rights. It might seem skewed at first by it does force change.”

City insurance worker Melissa Nunes said, “Gwen told me once that women must make their voices heard. Working in a male-dominated environment, I make sure that every day my voice is heard.”